


The Ancient Art of Forgetting

by Square Pudding (Square_Pudding)



Series: Demolition Lovers [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Biting, Crying, D/s, Hair-pulling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mixing Alcohol and Drugs, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Piercings, Recreational Drug Use, Rope Bondage, Shotgunning, Trans Male Character, Turkfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:42:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Square_Pudding/pseuds/Square%20Pudding
Summary: Reno falls apart in Wutai. Rude puts him back together, with rope.
Relationships: Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII)
Series: Demolition Lovers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798939
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	The Ancient Art of Forgetting

**Author's Note:**

> There is no rape or assault in this fic, however this follows the same continuity as my other Demolition Lovers fics and a past rape is alluded to. 
> 
> Real-life locoweed is toxic to humans, so just assume the FF7 variety is handwavey fantasy weed and Turks are just douchey enough to be vapebros. 
> 
> This fic is about imperfect vessels who do dumb things like mix drugs and alcohol and then have bondage sex in order to cope with trauma. You should probably not do any of these things.

The wind whipped at Reno’s ponytail.

 _Good view up here,_ he thought, looking down at the acres of forest spread out beneath them, the bright sloping roofs of the Wutai capital peeking through the foliage like an ancient fortress in the distance. Which, Reno supposed, it really was. Six thousand years of history, blah blah blah.

He lit a cigarette.

“You know,” he said conversationally, boots scraping over the carved stone of Da-Chao’s generous hand as he climbed down close to the edge, where eight white-knuckled fingers were hanging from generous Da-Chao’s generous fingernail for dear life. “The best thing about this is? I actually _can_ say it was nothing personal, bitch.”

Don Corneo looked up at him in wet, wide-eyed terror.

“I know you,” he whimpered, fingers blanched cirrhosis-yellow as he clung from the statue’s edge, his feet dangling over the void. “Where do I know you from?”

“...Tch.”

Reno blew out the first puff of his cigarette without even tasting it and brought the heel of his boot on Corneo’s fingers. The don shrieked, tears and snot and greasy sweat streaming down his face.

“I remember! I remember!” he wailed, and shouted a name that was thankfully swallowed by the wind. “Please! I’ll pay you anything! Just have mercy!”

“Too late, shitpig,” Reno said. Ten years daydreaming about this exact moment, and somehow all he felt was disappointment.

Still, he raised his voice, speaking up loud enough for that valor-stealing 1st Class Asshole and his buddies to hear.

“All right, Corneo. This’ll be over quick, so listen up.”

* * *

Reno was uncharacteristically quiet on their walk back to the capital, and once they returned to the bar he sunk even further into a mood, drinking with sullen purpose while Elena chattered, still riding high on the excitement of the day.

“I don’t think she was real kunoichi at all,” she said at some point. “Escape arts are fundamental to the ancient shinobi. She couldn’t even undo a simple sailor’s knot.”

 _Neither could you,_ Rude did not say aloud. He liked Elena. She was like a puppy -- clumsy, eager, desperate to please. But it was hard to celebrate her safety while his partner was slowly turning into a brooding black hole between them.

“Here you go, senpai,” said Elena, topping up Reno’s glass. Upon returning to the bar she’d ordered three bottles of their strongest shochu and insisted on serving, grateful as she was for the rescue. “After this let’s go see the fireworks! The barman said we can get a great view over by the koi pond.”

She was trying her best. But Reno would not be moved, even for explosions. He just sat there and continued to drink, slumping lower and lower into his chair. To Elena or anyone else who didn’t know him very well, he looked like he was falling into a depression, but Rude knew it was more complicated than that. Even on an average day, a run-in with Cloud’s group could leave him in a mood, and today had not been an average day.

The whole Cloud obsession was kinda weird to Rude. It went past ordinary rivalry. Maybe it was the Aerith thing -- they’d protected her all her life, and she just decides to skip town with a deserter and a bunch of terrorists? -- or maybe it was just vanity, getting shown up by a younger, prettier kid. When their groups had parted ways at the foot of Da-Chao, Reno had smiled nastily while shaking Cloud’s hand, and then stuck his tongue out at him the moment his back was turned.

“You know,” said Elena, happy to carry on while her superiors were busy introspecting, “I didn’t really want to join the Turks, but I’m glad I did.”

“Yeah?” said Rude. This didn’t square with the enthusiastic rookie image he had of her.

Elena nodded, rocking a little in her seat. “My sister, she was so talented. I didn’t want to get stuck in her shadow for my whole life. But then she just up and disappeared. I was soooo angry. I blamed the company, even when I was going through military school.”

Maybe a soberer Elena would’ve noticed the air getting sucked out of the room as she spoke, but not this one. She kept going, about how after her sister disappeared her parents had put up the family bar as collateral to pay for private investigators and lost everything in the end, even their marriage. Depressing shit, without a doubt, but Rude’s attention kept sliding to Reno, hunched against the edge of the table with his head cradled in his arms like he was fending off a headache, his eyes watery and vacant.

“Now I think I’ve made peace with it,” Elena continued. “I want to be a Turk that Emma would’ve been proud of.”

“That’s good,” Rude said, as neutrally as he could manage.

“Reno-senpai, you’re shaking the table,” Elena said, noticing his bouncing knee. “Is everything all right?”

“Leave him alone, Elena.”

Too late; the rookie leaned over to jostle him playfully, bumping his shoulder with hers. “You’re not _sulking,_ are you, senpai? Wishing you could’ve squared off with Strife after al--”

The last word became an ear-splitting bang, as Reno abruptly slammed his fist against the table. Elena jumped, nearly falling out of her chair; empty bottles and stacks of empty appetizer dishes rattled. Even the bar’s ambient string music ceased, as a scattering of patrons looked over their shoulders and the bartender craned his head to see.

“Reno,” Rude said softly in the expanding silence, knowing that it was a long shot and having to try anyway. “Let’s go grab a smoke.”

“Pass,” Reno muttered, hair hanging over his face as he rose from his seat. There was a certain weariness to his posture, slouched but keyed up, like someone missing a few days of sleep keeping it together on pure will. “Think m’gonna turn in early.”

It was barely approaching sunset, but if that was what Reno wanted, Rude didn’t see any reason to stop him. Reno staggered toward the stairs, not half as wobbly as Elena but surly enough to make up for it, hands stuffed in his pockets like an ill-behaved schoolkid. The other customers gave him a wide berth as he went.

Elena looked to Rude, genuine fear in her eyes. “This won’t hurt my performance review, will it?”

Rude shrugged, taking a sip of his shochu. “What happens off-duty stays off-duty,” he said, but inwardly he worried. Reno was coping even worse than he feared.

The outburst had sobered Elena slightly, but apparently not enough for her to start drastically rethinking her recent life decisions. She leaned nearer to Rude. “But what did I say? Is he really that sore over losing to Strife a couple times?”

“It’s not over Strife,” Rude said, before his discretion caught up to him. He took another sip of his drink and instantly regretted it, warm numbness spreading through his mouth and sinuses. “Hrm. Maybe a bit of it is.”

“Then what?” Elena prodded, seeing the weakness in her superior’s defense and launching herself at it. A puppy she might be, but she was still a pitbull, just like her sister. “It couldn’t have something to do with _Corneo,_ could it?”

Rude chewed at his cheek. He shouldn’t have said anything at all, but that chocobo had left the paddock now. “He’s got history with him,” Rude said, deciding that was a simple enough explanation. Then, because he felt guilty and because it was true anyway, he added, “We both do.”

Elena blinked. “You’ve gone against him before--?”

“Not officially.”

“But unofficially?”

Rude hid a wince. “Unofficially, we fucked up.”

It had to be more than eight years ago now. Rude had been a rookie, fresh from the Wall Market fighting pits. And Reno had been a whole other creature, liable to pick a fight with anyone, especially his new partner. But they’d found common ground in Corneo, the man who had, in one way or another, contaminated both their lives. They’d hatched a plan to take him out -- without the knowledge of their superiors -- but he’d slipped through their fingers, leaving them to rot in one of his underground panic rooms.

Rude and Reno had resolved to finish things someday, if the opportunity presented itself. It was both serendipitous and horrible that their chance surfaced _here,_ in the middle of their vacation, just as the whole world seemed to be going crazy.

Elena was rapt in her chair. “So you finally got to settle the score. But that’s even more reason to celebrate, not less! Why is he so upset, then?”

Rude heard a thump from the ceiling, followed by a muffled crash. “Sometimes we aren’t ready to put certain things to bed.”

* * *

Wutai’s conversion from sovereign nation to glorified tourist trap was a slow and painful process, with many of the capital’s businesses shabbily retrofitted into restaurants and brothels. So it was that Turtle’s Paradise was actually the ground floor of a traditional Wutaian inn, with upstairs rooms overlooking the river and a small hot spring in the back.

The Turks had rented two rooms, one for Elena and one for Rude and Reno together. As Rude reached the top of the stairs, there was little question which of the rooms his partner was in. 

A squat Wutaian woman in a stiff, plain kimono -- the inn proprietor -- was hovering outside the door, frazzled and incensed. She got into Rude’s face the moment she saw him approach.

“I won’t tolerate this, even from Shinra,” she told him, as the sounds of destruction continued within. “If this continues--”

“We’ll pay for the damages,” Rude interrupted, brushing her aside.

It wasn’t like a Wutaian inn had much furniture for Reno to break anyway. The table was upended, the chairs broken; the leg of a small stool was embedded in the sliding panel of the closet, and shards of a broken teapot and decorative vase were scattered everywhere. Their suitcases had also taken a beating, spare clothes and gear flung to all corners of the room.

Reno himself had mostly reached the end of his rampage and was leaning against the wall, his back to the door and to his partner. He was breathing hard, clawing at fistfuls of his hair, every harsh exhale shaking his entire body.

Rude had never seen Reno like this in all their years of knowing each other. Even after the plate drop, and that shit had been rough on both of them. As he watched frozen from the doorway, Reno’s sharp gasps gave way to dry sobbing, and then not-so-dry sobbing, sliding down to the floor in a curled-up mess with his face in his hands.

“Reno--”

He couldn’t tell if Reno could even hear him. The redhead was crying loudly now, choking and gulping like he was struggling to breathe through it, shocked at his own body’s responses.

It was too much, Rude guessed. Corneo, the plate drop, Aerith, losing Zack. Their stayed execution, their absent colleagues. It was just all boiling over inside Reno now, pouring out of whatever opening it could find.

Without thinking, Rude went to Reno’s side, kneeling on the tatami beside his crumpled-up partner. Reno had barely even registered his presence before Rude was framing his face with his hands, kissing his tear-salted mouth.

“Why…?” Reno croaked when they parted, his voice scraped raw, eyeliner smeared into dark rings around his eyes.

Rude, never at home with words, didn’t even try explaining himself. He just kissed Reno again.

“--Rude--”

He kissed him again.

“--I--”

He kissed him again.

Gradually, by degrees, Reno’s lips softened. He began to let him in, eyes fluttering half-closed, small sighing moans lost against Rude’s mouth. His breathing calmed, tension seeping from his muscles like a slow, full-body exhale as he sank almost boneless into his partner’s arms.

Shifting his weight, Rude moved them away from the wall and carefully eased Reno down onto his back on the tatami, ponytail curled like a question mark beside his head. Rude slid fingers through the soft spikes of his hair, behind his ears where he liked it most, each deep kiss followed by a scattering of light ones, nipping at his bottom lip so full and velvet-soft.

Soon enough, Reno was wriggling beneath him, returning Rude’s gentle kisses with harder, more insistent presses of his lips. His hands went to Rude’s shoulders, not to push him off but for a handhold as he slipped out from under him, liquid as a cat, twisting around to force Rude, instead, down onto the floor.

“Here?” Rude grunted, lying back while Reno set upon his belt buckle, shock-bright eyes burning with purpose. It wasn’t like he had any objections to having sex on the floor -- they’d done it in way weirder places and at least the tatami was clean -- but the whole point to having their own hotel room was so they could take their time for once. Now Reno was yanking open his fly and pulling his cock out like his life depended on it, kissing and stroking Rude’s length until it began to fatten in his hand.

“Just do this for me,” Reno mumbled against his cock, giving his nuts a light squeeze, like there was ever the remotest possibility that Rude would say no to him. He dragged his tongue along the ridge of the shaft, over the bead of Rude’s piercing, eliciting a little involuntary gasp as Rude felt the bar sliding up through his urethra and dropping again with a tug.

“Ngh.” Rude’s nails dug into the tatami as he tried not to buck his hips. One downside to a partner who knew all your weaknesses was that he _knew all your goddamn weaknesses._ “‘Least lemme work you up first.”

“Shut up.” Reno got to his feet, but only long enough to fling off his clothes, bare skin cast in a golden sunset glow coming through the windows. He almost looked lit from within, a wild-eyed fae creature which didn’t entirely belong in the mortal realm. Still sniffling and rubbing at his smudged eyes, he climbed down onto the floor again, knees to either side of Rude’s hips as he lined himself up with his cock.

“Hold on,” Rude protested. Usually he spent a lot of time loosening Reno up with his tongue or his fingers before they got to this point. 

“Shut _up._ Just stay there; you don’t hafta do anything.”

Reno sucked in a breath, eyes hard and narrow with concentration as he began lowering himself onto Rude’s dick. Despite himself, Rude found his hands moving to Reno’s thighs, fingers sinking into the soft flesh below his ass. He felt the head of his cock pressing against Reno’s folds, beginning to spread them, sticky fever-hot skin gripping the sensitive glans.

Tight. He was too tight. Rude clenched his teeth and fought back a groan, nails digging into the backs of Reno’s thighs. It was like trying to squeeze into a compression suit meant for someone half his size, prickling hot constriction on the very edge of pain. Reno was doing considerably worse: fat beads of sweat rolled down his face, lips drawn back in obvious agony as he struggled to fit more than an inch of Rude’s shaft inside him.

Finally he crumbled, lifting off Rude’s dick and collapsing against his chest instead, sodden face buried miserably in his partner’s shirt.

“Goddammit,” he moaned. “Why can’t I just…?”

Rude exhaled a long breath and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

He had known Reno a long time. The longest of anyone, maybe, except for Tseng. He knew all his moods, his habits, his long list of quirks and insecurities. Even the tears were, in a way, completely expected: Reno suffered such a bad case of pride, he would rather break down than admit something from the past still held so much power over him.

In eight years, Rude had never gotten the full story of Reno’s time in Wall Market. But he knew the basic outline: a country kid who’d run away to the big city and fallen into Midgar’s infamous red light district, only to be plucked from the streets for an “audition” with Don Corneo. Rude had seen the photos, once, and burned them. But if those images could remain seared in his mind for eight solid years, what must it have been like to live through it?

Stiffly, mindful of his arousal still wedged between Reno’s thigh and his stomach, Rude bent up into a sitting position, holding his partner in his arms. Reno’s face was an absolute mess, blotchy and streaked, eyes swollen and almost the same color as his tattoos. Rude used the edge of his sleeve to wipe away some of the black smudges on his cheeks.

“Let me take care of you,” he said.

Reno’s eyes widened, mouth forming around some objection. That it was too much to ask, that he didn’t deserve it, that he’d fight it if Rude tried. He hated giving up control, even when he needed it.

Rude cut his protests off with a kiss, tasting himself on Reno’s lips. “Trust me,” he said.

“I do trust you,” Reno mumbled, looking down at his hands.

Rude kissed the corner of his mouth. “You remember your safeword?”

“Come on, not this again--”

“Say it.”

Reno huffed. “‘Safeword.’”

Good. Reno could be flip about negotiating these things, but he knew how to pump the brakes if they started going too fast. Rude kissed him again, slow and deep.

The first thing he did (after killing his hard-on) was clear enough space on the floor to lay one of the futons out. The next thing Rude did was sift through their scattered belongings till he found a small plastic baggie with Reno’s vape pen and cartridges.

As a younger man, Reno had been pretty adventurous with needles and pills, and Rude had usually turned a blind eye to it, as long as his partner kept it in check. Now that they were older, hard drugs just didn’t hold the same appeal, but there were still some times when Reno needed a little help staying put. Locoweed vapor was good for that. It took effect quickly, filed the edges off Reno’s sharper parts, and (most importantly) they could use it indoors. Rude couldn’t count the Friday nights Reno had shown up at his room in the Shinra Building bearing a pen, a six pack, and a box set of some terrible Turks-themed action drama, looking to fall into giggling oblivion for a couple hours.

Rude heated up the pen and drew the first puff, holding the vapor in his mouth as he beckoned Reno over to him. He cupped his chin, pressing their lips together with a firm seal as he breathed into his partner’s mouth. Reno inhaled deeply, eyelashes fluttering against his tear-stained cheeks.

A couple more hits should be plenty. Rude passed the pen off to Reno and went back to searching through their luggage, the warmth from the vapor still tingling in his sinuses.

Reno sighed, flopping down on the futon as he drew his second hit. He already looked more relaxed, even though the real fun chemicals wouldn’t kick in for another five minutes. Reclined on the bed with only the vape pen between his fingers, beautiful pale body on display, he resembled a nude out of some classic painting.

Under a broken chair and a pile of shirts, Rude found what he was looking for. He grabbed the bundle of red silk rope and returned to Reno’s side just as he’d finished dosing himself, loose-limbed and ready to be tied up.

Rude unwrapped and fed out the first length of rope, just a couple meters to get them started. The irony hadn’t escaped him that here they were, in the birthplace of opium and kinbaku, and they were using drugs and rope he’d bought in Wall Market. Wherever these rope-tying lessons were that Yuffie girl was skipping out on, he’d’ve liked to attend that class himself. Video tutorials and diagrams only helped him so much.

He undressed, then had Reno sit up facing away from him and spent some time binding his arms. At first, every whisper of the rope over Reno’s skin caused him to fidget, and he slipped the knots twice in a spasm-like reflex, forcing Rude to start over while Reno cursed and apologized. Gradually his breathing slowed and his reactions turned sluggish, the nervous tension seeping from his shoulders as the drug worked through his system. By the time Rude had his wrists done properly, Reno’s fingers weren’t even twitching anymore, his whole body gone soft and pliant in his partner’s hands.

Rude touched Reno’s cheek from behind. “Tell me your word again,” he prompted.

“‘Safeword,’” Reno answered, slurring a little, but still lucid. Rude kissed behind his ear as a reward, sending up a scattering of gooseflesh over his nape and shoulders. Which, obviously, Rude felt compelled to kiss as well. Reno giggled loosely, legs squirming but making no effort to move away from him. “Your whiskers--”

Rude’s hand wandered over Reno’s side until it found a place where it fit perfectly, cupped over his pec. He kneaded in slow circles, pinching the nipple between his fingers, tugging on the little steel barbell pierced through it. Reno gasped and twisted, the blush that had started on his cheeks spreading south as the little nub hardened between Rude’s fingers.

“You’re so sensitive today,” Rude murmured in his ear, fondling his chest with both hands now, while Reno tossed and clenched his thighs together. This was actually a pretty typical level of response, but what Rude had discovered over the years was that if he _said_ Reno was sensitive, he really _would_ be, the fantasy of even his body’s responses betraying him knocking down that last layer of inhibitions. It worked like a charm: soon Reno was trembling from every small touch, full-body shuddering while Rude licked the outer shell of his ear.

“Whose -- fault is that--?” Reno panted, delirious and listing to one side as Rude’s hands explored the familiar territory of his body, every little invisible scar marking a place where he’d upgraded himself over the years. His chest, his thighs, his stomach, the materia stud in his navel. “Fuck, Rude…”

“You’re beautiful,” Rude said softly, because it was one of the only times he could say it without getting pushback. He kissed the side of Reno’s throat, trailed his fingers over his ribs in a way he knew Reno would find ticklish, just to see him squirm and groan.

“Shinra, ahh, medical technology at its finest.”

“More than that,” Rude said. His partner’s body was a finely-tooled machine optimized for agility, toned and sculpted with the elegant angles of a precision instrument, not an ounce of fat where he didn’t need it. Surgery may’ve played a role in making that, but Reno was the one executing a vision for himself, slowly carving himself free from the marble. How could Rude not adore a body with so much obvious loving care put into it?

He kissed a line down Reno’s neck and over his shoulder, savoring every little hitch in his breathing. “It’s you,” he murmured against his skin.

That was treading very close to Reno’s threshold for compliments. He moaned, tugging restlessly at the knots around his wrists. “Fuck, touch me already.”

“I am.”

“No, my--” Another shudder rocked through Reno’s body, as Rude’s fingers brushed over his spine on the way to his wrists. “My pussy, my clit, fuck, I wanna come so bad.”

“So come,” Rude said. “Nobody’s stopping you.” 

“I can’t -- I need _something_ , I can’t just…”

“Guess you’re gonna have to wait, then,” he said, taking up the red silk rope and resuming his work. He had at most 30 minutes before Reno’s high started to level off and he didn’t want to spend all that time figuring out knots.

* * *

It was a blur, wet paint sliding over wet canvas, one touch leading seamlessly into the next as he was handled, repositioned, changed. Braided cord slid over his body like snakeskin, here soft and light, there digging into his flesh, pins-and-needles tingling through his extremities as Rude’s thumb pressed into the center of his palms and the spaces between vertebrae. He could follow it, but he got lost in the details, drifting into a syrupy flow-state while his body became like a doll’s in his partner’s hands.

Every now and then Reno felt a flash of panic, but it swept past him as quickly as it arrived, carried along the same current as his thoughts. Rude was so warm, so big; Reno was swallowed up, lost and helplessly tiny against his chest, drowning. When Rude kissed him, Reno’s lungs swelled with silken hot air and he felt the creak of the rope as it drew tight around his ribs, his biceps, his arms folded snug against his back. 

“How’s that?” Rude’s voice drifted down from somewhere over Reno’s head, as he finished the knot between his shoulder blades. “Too tight?”

“Nope,” Reno answered dreamily, enjoying the pressure of the ropes digging into his skin as he spoke. _Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times..._

The world tipped sideways, and Reno was on his stomach, face buried in the pillow. He tossed his head, looking back over his shoulder in time to see Rude’s hand closing around his ankle.

“More--?”

“Little bit more,” said Rude, like he was apologizing. He bent Reno’s left leg back until the heel rested against the curve of his ass. Reno’s heart thudded out of rhythm as he felt the rope sliding over his inner thigh. “You’re doing real good, partner.”

Reno could’ve glowed. He stayed as still as he could manage while Rude trussed up his leg, hands brushing teasingly close to Reno’s slit as he passed the rope through his thighs. With each pass Rude’s hands moved a little slower, lingered longer on his skin. His knuckles brushed Reno’s outer folds, sending little static sparks crackling through the soaked gash of his cunt and bringing a whimper to Reno’s lips.

“You really need it, huh?” Rude asked, allowing the rope to slide a little higher, soft warm snakeskin running along the edge of his slit.

Reno found that his hands had clenched into fists and unknotted them, the pleasure of that tiny relief warming like an ember in his palms for one half-second. Every nerve in his body felt lit up, attuned to the slightest pressure from Rude’s fingers, the electricity of his body. Rude’s teasing voice wasn’t helping.

“Pl, please.”

“Please what?”

Reno groaned, burying his face in the pillow again. The word had just tumbled out of him and now he couldn’t put it back.

“Please… I need it so fucking bad.”

Behind him, Rude finished the last knot on Reno’s left leg and turned his attention to the right one, fingers tracing over the tattoo inked above his ass. “Try again.”

Reno fidgeted, twisting his wrists within their restraints, even though the knots that held his arms allowed so little movement they might as well be fused to his back. If he pulled on one part he felt the rope tightening somewhere else, his pulse carrying through the braided red cord like a second system of veins overlaying the first. 

_Corneo’s blanched bloodless fingers hanging onto the edge of Da-Chao. His red silk smoking jacket whipping in the wind, his feet dangling over the void. Blubbering insult heaped on injury: “Where do I know you from?”_

“Please fuck me till I can’t remember my name,” Reno begged.

Right answer. In the next moment, Reno felt the pressure of the rope winding around his right thigh go lax, as Rude loosed his hold on the half-finished knot. He got his arms under his partner and summarily flipped him onto his back. Reno had a brief glimpse of Rude’s renewed erection bobbing against his thigh before he was burying his face between Reno’s legs, tongue driving into his heat.

Reno cried out, hips bucking, the unfinished knot over his leg unraveling as he dug his heel into the futon. His other leg was still wrapped tight, the ropes cutting hard into the flesh of his thigh as Rude pushed his bound leg flat against the sheets near his hip, keeping Reno’s legs spread as he lapped the nectar from his overflowing cunt.

“Rude!” Reno gasped, streaks of pleasure arcing through his body like electricity. Rude’s tongue twined around his overgrown clit and he _wailed,_ hot static in his ears. “Rude! Rude!”

Time expanded around them. Rude’s mouth was relentless, the familiar scrape of his whiskers against Reno’s skin a sharp counterpoint to his hot brand of a tongue, fingers digging white-nailed into the soft unmarked skin of his ass as Rude’s lips closed tight around Reno’s clit and sucked.

Reno jerked, toes curling, a deep-throated cry stealing out of him as the wave swept him up faster than he could brace himself. Rude rode out his partner’s shuddering, dipping his tongue right back into his quivering hole and lapping at that tender, rough-textured spot along his inner passage while Reno’s brain filled with white noise.

“I can’t,” he might have sobbed, as Rude replaced his tongue with his fingers, already slicked up with a mixture of spit, lube, and cunt juice. Reno tore his eyes away as they slid into him, frictionless and impossibly thick, immediately grinding on that vulnerable spot inside him. Molten pleasure bloomed through his pelvis through the buzzing hum of overstimulated nerves. “Fuck, I can’t, I…”

As it turned out, he could.

Reno’s head sank back against the pillow, weakness settling into his muscles as his second, deeper climax thundered through his body like a struck church bell. He breathed out slowly, unsteadily, a captive bubble of helium tickling in his lungs as his limbs filled with lead.

Rude’s fingers slipped free with a vulgar slurch, little aftershock-spasms radiating through Reno’s pelvis. He climbed up, peppering small kisses over his partner’s cheeks and lips and brow like lavishing praise on a well-trained pet. Reno whined into Rude’s mouth, barely able to do much more than meet his lips with his own. “Getting faster,” Rude murmured above him, pressing a (clean) couple fingers to the side of his throat to verify he still had a pulse. “That was less than a minute.”

“Nnuh… guh…”

“You wanna stop?”

“Nn-nn,” Reno protested with a languid shake of his head.

“Use your words.”

Reno groaned, managing finally to lift his head and glower at his partner, who was gathering up the loose rope that had unraveled around Reno’s right leg and tossing it clear of the bed. So clean-cut and professional-looking, even when he was _literally_ buck naked with a massive hard-on resting against his thigh. It just wasn’t fair.

“Words,” Reno said, just to be a little shit.

“Good,” Rude said, declining the bait without even a glance. “Roll over.”

This seemed an unreasonably tall order of someone with exactly one limb free (and not a very responsive one, at that), but Reno huffed and tried anyway, swinging his weight side-to-side until he could get up the momentum to roll up on his right shoulder.

“Other side,” Rude corrected, before Reno could have the satisfaction of this small accomplishment. He hooked a hand under Reno’s free leg and turned him over onto his left side, so that Reno’s bound leg was pinned beneath his body and his free one could be extended or repositioned however Rude wanted. Like now, hitching up his thigh until the knee was almost bent to Reno’s shoulder. Rude slid into place behind him, the hot brand of his cock nestling against the crack of Reno’s ass.

“Fuck, yes,” Reno moaned, feeling the heavy, solid weight of it sliding up his inner thigh, wedging itself against his slit. Rude rolled his hips and Reno felt the shaft drag between his outer lips, slicking itself in the soaking mess of his cunt. He bent his back, trying to arch his spine in such a way to slot their bodies together, a needy whimper at his throat -- but a moment later Rude was backing off, his cock slipping free from between Reno’s thighs as he sat up and started reaching for something he’d left beside the bed.

There was the distinct rustle of a plastic wrapper. Reno, twisting on the futon to get a glimpse over his shoulder, got one glance of Rude rolling the condom over his gorgeous pierced dick and whined, “Aw, no.”

Rude gave him a stern look, and pointedly did not stop putting the condom on. Every big dick Reno had ever slept with had bragged about being too big for a rubber but Rude was the only one for whom that was very nearly true. Finding a brand that fit _and_ was thick enough not to tear on his Prince Albert _and_ still let him feel anything had been one of the bigger challenges of their relationship. And they really only used them for one activity.

“Really no?” Rude asked. “Or ‘keep going’ no?”

“You’re suffocating that thing.”

“Feels cozy, actually,” Rude said, apparently taking that as a _‘keep going.’_ He slathered a generous handful of lube over his poor, trapped, rubbered-up cock and then squirted another handful into his palm for good measure, laying back down beside Reno on the futon.

They shared a slightly awkward kiss over Reno’s shoulder as Rude slid his slicked-up hand between Reno’s legs. Cool fingers dipped into Reno’s slit with an obscene squelch and gathered up the prodigious mess of pussy juice, smearing it, along with the lube, into Reno’s crack.

The first stroke was always the sweetest. Rude worked Reno open with a practiced hand and pressed the fat tip of his cock against that quivering pucker of muscle. The pressure gave way to a _delectable_ stretch and burn as the head popped inside, and a shudder traveled up the length of Reno’s spine, making the little hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Rude levered Reno’s free leg into a better position as he rocked a little more safety-wrapped dick into his ass. Every little nudge was like being spread open anew, a little more of Reno’s insides rearranging themselves to accommodate the slow but inexorable merging of their bodies, the squeezing of his breath into a smaller and smaller quadrant of his lungs.

They didn’t do it this way very often, for fairly obvious reasons. It took so much build up and it nearly wasn’t worth it, but there was something so wildly intimate about the absolute lack of space between them, the way his body simply molded around Rude’s cock until they were fitted so snugly neither could move. When Rude finally bottomed out inside him and began to draw back, there was a terrifying lurch where for one half-second it seemed likely that Reno’s insides would get dragged out too, that something would tear or shatter -- and then he was rocking into him again, thrusting into his heat, whatever tiny degree of separation offered by the condom absolutely forgotten.

Reno’s pussy clenched around nothing. The stretch and the fullness of Rude hilted inside his ass was enough to drown out his thoughts in white noise but his pussy was left aching, still sore and tender from his back-to-back orgasms.

Anticipating his partner’s needs like he always did, Rude reached around Reno’s narrow waist and gathered his neglected clit-cock into his fist, stroking and squeezing in rough time with his thrusts. Reno tipped his head back, a surprisingly guttural groan in his throat, which Rude rewarded with a harsh biting kiss on the side of his neck.

He soon lost track of the particulars. Rude was touching his clit, his nipples, his trembling thigh of his unbound leg still bent in the air. Everything was friction and crushing pressure and Rude, his partner, the one who knew him best. The one who knew how to unlock any sound he wanted with a few deft presses of his fingers and how to reach those deepest places, scratch itches no one else could scratch.

But Rude was also hitting his limit. He rolled Reno over so that he was facedown on the sheets again, ass in the air, and knelt behind him, slotting his full length back inside with a single stroke. It knocked the breath from Reno’s lungs with a barely-audible grunt, insides burning from the renewed stretch. Before he had a chance to recover, Rude was drawing back and thrusting into him again, crushing him into the futon with the force and weight of his larger frame.

Reno wailed, wet and muffled by the bedding. _This_ was it, this was what he needed: the bite of the ropes, the half-moons dug into his hips, his own pleasure made irrelevant as Rude finally, _finally_ started plowing his ass for real. Reno’s eyes, stinging with sweat and leftover tears, squeezed shut as Rude’s pace grew brutal, each snap of his hips met with an obscene smack of flesh on flesh. If they were doing this the usual way, Rude’s gorgeous, glittering, raw dick would be grinding right on his G-spot, making him come with every stroke. Like this, he teetered on the edge of orgasm, mourning the absence of Rude’s fingers on his clit.

Finally, he felt Rude touching the back of his head, scything fingers through sweat-damp spikes of hair and wrenching tight. Rude yanked and Reno’s head was forced back, gasping icy stripes of cool evening air, nothing to muffle him at all when Rude plunged in deep and pushed past the last barrier Reno had.

“Rude,” he cried, really cried, because all the words were falling out of him into some cold dark abyss and Rude was so impossibly deep and there was nothing else inside Reno, nothing else at all, and it was so warm and so full and. “Rude. Rude! Rude!”

“I’m here, partner.”

* * *

Rude had just enough time to clean them both up and tidy around the bed a little before Reno started to come down off his high.

“Why the hell are my arms like this,” he groused, pulling side-to-side at the knots holding his arms bent behind his back.

“Because otherwise you’d escape,” Rude explained with his usual patience, undoing the last loop of the frog tie binding Reno’s leg. Because they’d used one long length of rope, he had to work backwards to get it all off him. 

“Nuh-uh, no I wouldn’t.”

“Yes you would. You always do.” It wasn’t, as far as Rude could tell, a conscious act on Reno’s part -- he just hated staying still and loved to show off, two qualities that unfortunately did not mix well with bondage.

Rude ran a hand over the livid red marks dug into Reno’s thigh, almost the same color as the rope that had created them. Now that he’d taken care of his own arousal, he could properly focus on taking care of Reno for the rest of the evening. As younger men, they might’ve gone two or three full rounds before he was well and truly wiped, but age was catching up to Rude. Catching up to both of them, probably, even if Reno still carried himself like a teenager.

Well. He didn’t look much like a kid _now,_ still half tied up and debauched six ways from Thursday. As pale moonlight slipped in through a gap in the curtains, it fell on the _other_ fine lines etched almost invisibly into Reno’s skin: the scar on his hip, the light freckles that were all that remained of countless bullet wounds. Shinra medical technology at its finest, indeed.

Rude weathered his partner’s complaints while he loosened the knots encircling his waist, then his shoulders, then his wrists. He kissed them, rubbed his thumbs into the pink grooves over his pulse points, massaging the blood back into his fingers. 

“Feel like talking yet?” he asked, as they settled back into bed again, with Reno spooned against his chest. He traced his fingers over the diamond pattern the ropes had left on his partner’s ribs.

Reno drew a shuddering breath, as though feeling a sudden chill even with Rude pressed against his back. “He’s dead. It’s finished.”

Rude tucked his chin against Reno’s shoulder. “You know he doesn’t have to define you,” he said.

“Who said he did?” Reno countered, sounding choked. He cleared his throat, but it only got worse, strained and wounded, trying to hold back another unwanted surge of emotion. “Shut up. You don’t fucking know what this is like.”

“You could tell me, if you wanted.”

“I don’t.”

Rude winced. He'd hit this wall so many times over the years, he should've been numb to it -- he wasn't entitled to Reno's past, no one was, Turks weren't supposed to have them -- but Reno wasn't the only one who had had a long day.

“How long have we been partners?” Rude asked.

Reno started, twisting to meet his partner’s eyes. “What--?”

“How long?”

Reno fell silent, sinking back onto the bed, and Rude wasn’t sure if he was smarting from the callback or honestly trying to do the math in his head. He decided to take pity in either case.

“It’s been eight years.”

“Oh,” said Reno. Another long pause. “Common law marriage is ten. Wonder if we’ll qualify for family housing?”

Rude sighed. And then smiled, although it was sort of a weak one. Reno had been joking like this for years, had even gotten them to go undercover as a married couple -- more than once. He never, ever meant it.

“Just you, me, and the baby?” Rude asked, deciding to play along.

Reno groaned. “Shit, I kinda blew up at her, huh?”

“She’s fine. Unless she’s still drinking.” Even before Reno had departed upstairs, Elena had helped herself to the lion’s share of the shochu. With any luck she was sleeping it off somewhere in a room that didn’t share any walls with theirs. “You were pretty hard on her in front of Cloud.”

Now he’d done it. All this tiptoeing around the dreaded 'C' word, and it wasn't Corneo after all. The muscles tightened along Reno’s back and he rubbed at the marks over his wrists, quietly seething.

“Valor-stealing prissy-ass _bitch_ …”

“He helped us out today,” Rude felt compelled to point out. He tried running his hands over Reno’s shoulders and upper arms, like all he needed to loosen up again was a bit of warmth. “What’s your actual deal with him?”

Rude expected the regular litany of excuses. That Cloud lied about being a vet, that he humiliated Reno in front of Aerith, that his hair just _came_ in that color. Instead, what came out of Reno’s mouth at great length and a sigh of resignation was:

“I used to wanna be in SOLDIER.”

 _This_ made Rude lift his head. He peered at Reno, his face so soft in profile and his hair spread over the pillow, almost black under the delicate moonlight. He was staring out the gap in the curtains, or maybe staring at nothing at all.

“Lotta boys did, back then,” Rude said.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t a boy then. Or I was, but, you know.” Reno waved a hand listlessly and dropped it against the futon again. “Mom didn’t want her only baby going off to war. Dad already had one foot in the grave. So I stole some money and hotfooted it to Midgar, y'know?”

It was a common story. Sephiroth’s long flowing hair was probably responsible for thousands of confused, horny teenagers marching gladly to their deaths. But Turks had a slightly different relationship with the SOLDIER “enlistment” process, such that it was hard to imagine Reno ever willingly signing up for that.

“What happened?” Rude asked.

“Washed out after the first mako bath,” Reno said with a self-effacing grin. “Probably why my eyes are still boring.”

Years of intense study had convinced Rude that no one in the history of the human race had ever had eyes quite like Reno’s, but somehow the idea of mako conditioning had never occurred to him. If that was what a single direct exposure did... Images rushed into Rude’s head unbidden as he recalled how some of the other SOLDIER candidates came out.

“You got the better end of the deal, winding up in the Turks,” Rude said, shaking these mental images aside and settling down beside his partner on the futon again. Reno turned so that they were facing each other, lying together like scouts sharing secrets at camp. “Better salary.”

“Turns out it’s better life expectancy too.” The grin waned and then vanished, as dark thoughts clouded Reno’s eyes again.

It was still so fresh, losing Veld, all their colleagues. A few months ago the Turks occupied a whole floor of the Shinra Building and now they were in a fucking closet in the basement, and Rufus didn’t exactly see staffing up the department as a priority. He liked the pets he had.

Rude kissed the furrow of Reno’s brow until it unfurrowed. “We’ll get them back someday,” he said.

Veld would return, Tseng would resume the role he was best suited for, Elena would reunite with her sister. The Turks would come back stronger than ever and all this Sephiroth shit would become a blip on the radar. It wasn't like the world was ending.

Reno forced a smile, eyes gleaming with the determined wetness of someone desperate to change the subject. “Sucks to be Cloud, right?” he said, almost convincingly. “Bet Avalanche doesn’t even have benefits. That’s why that Wallace guy has a gun glued to his arm. Probably fuckin’ blew his hand off throwing a bomb at a schoolbus or something.”

“Hmm.”

“Y’know what’d be hilarious?”

“What?”

“What if that’s Cloud’s whole deal too? Wanted to be like Sephiroth, ran off to join SOLDIER. Bet he’s from some podunk little village out in Corel nobody’s ever heard of.”

“That’d be a funny coincidence,” Rude agreed, not sure what else to say.

“Shut up, I’m not -- mmf -- finished.” Reno was half on top of him now, fingers splayed over the broad expanse of his partner’s chest. “That little blond bitch couldn’t’a hacked it any better than I could, right? He probably washed out same as me.”

Cloud Strife had eyes that suggested way more than a single mako bath. But it didn’t really matter what Strife’s actual story was, if the one Reno told helped him make sense of things.

Suppose there was someone else who had come from the country seeking glory, and been humiliated, and fell in with unsavory slum types instead. Suppose there was someone else who Corneo had used and discarded, and who had fought his way back from hell.

“Sounds like he would’ve made a good Turk,” Rude said, and placed another sucking kiss over the bite marks on Reno’s throat.

“Ah!” Reno threw his head back, spine bending under Rude’s fingers. “Fuck, don’t, put that image in my head--”

“He’d have to call you ‘senpai.’”

“Fuck!” Reno shuddered, nails sharp against Rude’s skin. He was wet again, the scent of his arousal making it very very difficult for Rude not to simply bury his face between his partner’s thighs once more. “God, Rude, I wanna see you fuck him… I wanna see you plow that scrawny blond ass…”

“And make you jealous?”

“I am _never_ jealous.”

“Sure,” said Rude, with a chuckle.

“Maybe while you're doing that, I’ll keep myself busy fucking the Tifa girl,” Reno theorized aloud.

Rude sputtered. But his dick, which by rights should’ve already calmed down for the evening, was twitching with interest again.

“Oh, you’d _like_ that, wouldn’t you?” Reno asked as he climbed fully astride Rude’s lap, his wild fae grin back where it was supposed to be. “Maybe we could put on a show for ya. Betcha anything she’s a squirter.”

 _“Reno,”_ said Rude, caught exactly halfway between mortified and feral with lust. He placed his hands around Reno’s hips, holding him steady when he started to grind against Rude’s slowly reawakening arousal, but not trying _too_ hard to stop him.

Outside, past the curtains, the night sky over the Wutai capital lit up with a golden burst of light. A split-second later the boom of the explosion reached them, rattling the traditional shoji screens in their tracks. Reno jumped, twisting around in his partner’s arms in time to see more spider-blooms of light filling the sky, golds and magentas and brilliant white crackling streaks.

“You know,” Reno said, pale eyes sparkling, “this vacation didn’t turn out half bad.”

“Guess not,” Rude agreed.

“Next time,” said Reno, “let’s bring everyone.”

“Yeah.”

“…We’re still getting our own room though.”

  
  
  


END

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on Twitter @robotdere.


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